Nine seniors from Plainfield High School-Central Campus, Plainfield North High School, and Plainfield East High School are among the more than 15,000 National Merit Scholarship 2025 finalists nationwide.
Plainfield High School-Central Campus
Caleb McMillin
Plainfield North High School
Gabriel Fazekas
Anushka Menon
Omer Mescioglu
Serena Sabzaali
Matthew Witek
Plainfield East High School
Stella Abarca
Mahi Kansagara
Connor Orr
The nine will compete for about 6,875 National Merit Scholarship awards worth about $2 million to be announced this month.
These seniors learned they were semifinalists in September 2024. About half of the finalists will be named National Merit Scholars.
This is the 70th year of the prestigious program, which honors academically talented high school seniors.
To become a National Merit Finalist, students must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier qualifying performance.
The finalist and a school official must also submit a detailed scholarship application, including the student’s self-descriptive essay and information about the student’s participation and leadership in school and community activities.
About 1.3 million high school juniors in about 21,000 high schools nationwide took the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test to enter the 2025 National Merit Program.
The pool of semifinalists comprises less than one percent of all United States high school seniors and includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.
National Merit Finalists will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit $2,500 scholarships.
About 130 corporations and businesses will also give about 770 corporate-sponsored scholarships to finalists who meet those organizations’ criteria.
And, about 150 colleges and universities are expected to finance about 3,600 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for Finalists attending their sponsoring institution.
The 2025 Merit Scholarship winners will be announced between April and July 2025. They will join more than 382,000 other distinguished students who have earned the title of National Merit Scholar.